Authentication, SSO and SSL

Authentication setup in Dolibarr

There is different solutions to be authenticated with Dolibarr. You can set the selected authentication method into the file htdocs/conf/conf.php in the parameter $dolibarr_authentication_mode. This is a list of available values:

• dolibarr
• http
• ldap
• forceuser
• googleoauth (for Google OAuth 2 authentication, Dolibarr 18+)...

You can combine several methods (some combinations are however technically not compatible). If you use several method (separated by a coma), you will try to authenticate using the first method and if it fails, the next method will be used. For example, if you set

$dolibarr_authentication_mode="ldap,dolibarr"

the system will try to authenticate using the LDAP database and if it fails it will try to login using the internal Dolibarr login/password

Each authentication mode may have complementary parameters (also into htdocs/conf/conf.php file) to have them working. Let's have a look at each available method:

Description of available authentication modes

Mode dolibarr

With this method, the login and pass you entered on login page will be compared to the login and the hashed password saved into the Dolibarr database (Table llx_user).

Mode http

You can set the authentication mode to "http" if your Dolibarr web application is protected by an Apache http basic authentication form. The login/pass are stored into the file used by the HTTP Basic system to store passwords (it is often a file called .htpasswd if you used the mod_auth_basic + mod_authn_file plugin of Apache).

This is an exemple of setup for Apache to protect your instance to be accessed using the HTTP Basic authentication (uncomment the section under line "# To restrict access by a HTTP basic auth" in this example)

https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr/blob/develop/dev/setup/apache/virtualhost

Note that the user must also exists as a existing user into the Dolibarr user database. Also the date of validity of this user must be valid.

Mode ldap

If you set the authentication mode to LDAP, the test of the validity of your login and password are done using a LDAP database.

The parameters to define where is your LDAP must be defined into the variable $dolibarr_main_auth_ldap_... (Fo security purpose, the parameters defined into the LDAP module of Dolibarr are used only by the pages of the application that need LDAP access, but for the authentication, only variables defined into the conf/conf.php file are used)

See the file https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr/blob/develop/htdocs/conf/conf.php.example for the list of $dolibarr_main_auth_ldap_... variables.

Note that the user must also exists as an existing user into the Dolibarr user database. Also the date of validity of this user must be valid.

Mode forceuser

When this method is used, there is no need to enter a login or password. No login page is shown. The user will be automatically set to the one defined into the variable $dolibarr_auto_user saved into htdocs/conf/conf.php

This mode is used only on development platforms. For example on an instance used to make demo or automated tests.

Note that the user must also exists as a existing user into the Dolibarr user database. Also the date of validity of this user must be valid.

Mode googleoauth

This code is to use the Google OAuth 2 authentication. It is available with version 18+.

• First enable the module OAuth on Dolibarr.
• Into the setup of the module, you must create an OAuth entry for provider Google and label "Login" (no other label will works). You will find a value for a Redirect URI that you must use in the next step.
• Go on Google console https://console.cloud.google.com/ - Menu API and services - Credentials, and create an OAuth ID client. You must use the URL found at previous step as Authorized redirect URIs.
• Go back to the Dolibarr OAuth setup page to enter the client ID and secret ID of the OAuth entry you have created. Choose the scope/permissions "openid" and "email".
• Edit the file conf/conf.php and set $dolibarr_main_authentication to "googleoauth" or "dolibarr,googleoauth" to allow both authentication with login/pass and google OAuth2

Now try to login. You must enter your Google account and you will be able to login without password if and only if a user exists into the Dolibarr database with the same email address than the one used to login to Google.

Mode openid

The method "openid" is an old method for using openID. Try to use instead the next method "openid_connect"

Mode openid_connect

OpenID Connect using the native method

This is a new method available with Dolibarr v18 to connect using OpenID Connect. You can set the authentication method value to "openid_connect".

See page https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr/issues/22740 for other required setup.

OpenID Connect using OpenID and the HTTP Basic of Apache

If you need to connect using OpenID Connect without using the native method (for example for Dolibarr < 18), you can also do it using the following solution:

The idea is to use two elements:

• The auth_openidc plugin for Apache
• Dolibarr HTTP authentication.

The procedure will therefore require Dolibarr installed with Apache and the apache module https://github.com/zmartzone/mod_auth_openidc. The latter is often directly available on Linux via a package manager command.

The second part will therefore be to configure this apache module in order to authenticate users with the OpenID Connect protocol. In the general case, you will only need the metadata URL. Here is an example apache configuration for OpenID with AzureAD:

    ...

    OIDCProviderMetadataURL https://login.microsoftonline.com/your-tenant-id/v2.0/.well-known/openid-configuration
    OIDCClientID youropenidclient
    OIDCClientSecret yoursecret
    OIDCCryptoPassphrase randomstring
    OIDCRedirectURI https://mydolibarr.example.com/sso_redirect
    OIDCScope "openid email profile"
    OIDCRemoteUserClaim email ^(.*)@

    # Disable openid-connect if using DoliDroid
    SetEnvIf User-Agent DoliDroid no-auth

    <Directory /home/.../htdocs>
        # Docroot
        AuthType openid-connect
        Require valid-user
        Require env no-auth
    </Directory>

    # Disallow openid-connect on some public pages or services
    # Leaving /public and /api, /dav, .well_known but also wrappers for document, viewimage and public json/img accessible to everyone
    <Directory /home/admin/wwwroot/dolibarr/htdocs/public/>
        AuthType None
        Satisfy any
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /home/admin/wwwroot/dolibarr/htdocs/api/>
        AuthType None
        Satisfy any
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /home/admin/wwwroot/dolibarr/htdocs/dav/>
        AuthType None
        Satisfy any
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /home/admin/wwwroot/dolibarr/htdocs/.well-known/>
        AuthType None
        Satisfy any
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    <Files ~ "(document\.php|viewimage\.php|\.js\.php|\.json\.php|\.js|\.css\.php|\.css|\.gif|\.png|\.svg|\.woff2|favicon\.ico)$"> 
        AuthType None 
        Require all granted 
        Satisfy any
    </Files>


    # And to support/manage the disconnetion
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /user/logout.php
    RewriteRule ^ /sso_redirect?logout= [R,L]

In the example above, the information to enter in OIDCProviderMetadataURL, OIDCClientID and OIDCClientSecret is provided by your OpenID Connect provider.

The OIDCRemoteUserClaim variable defines which "claim" will be used for the username. In our configuration example, we consider that the username that will be used in Dolibarr is what precedes the at sign in the email address.

After this manipulation, you should be prompted to log in to your OpenID Connect account to access your Dolibarr installation. However, it remains to indicate to Dolibarr that it must use the username defined by Apache. It is in the conf/conf.php file that we will perform this manipulation. Add the following line at the end of the file:

$dolibarr_main_authentication='http';

Your OpenID Connect authentication is now fully functional! Be careful however, there may be adjustments to make for this configuration to work with certain modules.

For example, the use of WebDav in Dolibarr (pages /dav/*) is not compatible with this configuration, or access to public pages (pages /public/*) or access to APIs (pages /api/*), will be blocked by the authentication request put in place. To avoid this, you must also exclude the paths which should not be protected by the Apache authentication for OpenID which defines the protected Directory. Here is an example configuration file of your apache virtual host to be able to use "http" authentication without blocking access to public pages (retrieve the exclusion under the line "# Leaving /public and /api, /dav, .well_known..." in this example):

https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr/blob/develop/dev/setup/apache/virtualhost

By further adapting this configuration, it is also possible to use Active Directory authentication and other authentication services.